Wednesday, June 06, 2007

But that's exactly what he gave me. It was a school science project where the children were given little fur balls that owls cough up after a meal, the ones that contain all the undigestable parts of the meal, only they're not called fur balls but owl pellets. Spencer told me with pride how he got an A on the assignment because his bones were in the correct order and that he'd cleaned them so well. Gulp.

Is that seriously a mouse? It's more the size of a rat. But I suppose that's not the point. The real point is your son opened owl pellets and cleaned mouse bones and somehow put the bones in the correct order. I am both gagging and impressed... but more just gagging.

We did this in junior high in my Life Science class. I promise you, there was a hamster skeleton in mine. I've always wondered how on earth that owl got ahold of a hamster...and if it was mine that ran away.

Wow, you need to have the boy watch that cop show called bones. Aside from the great dialogue and lines, the lady Dr. that the show is about is nicknamed bones, and when a murder case turns up bones, they get her and her amazing bone reading powers to reconstruct the death and help find the killer or killers.

Anyway, I said all of that to say this, on the show, they always thoroughly boil the bones in water to clean them of any remaining, um, meat.

Buy the boy a pot and let it be dedicated to bone boiling, kind of like I would be in deep trouble if I used my wifes cast iron corn bread skillet for something other than making cornbread.

It needs to be mentioned that the owl pellets are sterilized before they ever reach the classrooms. They are great homeschool projects, too. They don't cost a fortune and they teach! Your soon did a really good job on his! Sue B.